Aug 2, 2009

I truly enjoy going to the movies and the only thing that can make an experience better apart from the content I will watch is if the sound system kicks ass, if the chairs are comfy, if the popcorn doesn't taste like buttered styrofoam and if everyone can please behave and only offer the audio feedback you are asked to deliver from a joke, a fright or whatever. Apart from swine flu, there is apparently another variety of pandemics, including, annoying little shit virus.

You see, I think kids are adorable and whatnot, but there are just some places where I do not appreciate their existence. Call me Scrooge like that but from surveys and memory, I never kicked someone in an airplane and played peek a boo for two hours and in the movies I kept my thoughts to myself and my noise to a minimum. Sure I'll laugh if something's funny, I'll even guffaw, but I won't talk on the phone at normal volume levels and I will go out of my way to not annoy anyone else in the theater. Questions are to be left to the end of the movie, if you're in dire need of an answer you have a two question minimum. Comments do not have any type of limit as long as you keep it to a whisper.

So I'm watching the trailers and the variety of commercials that either make me cringe or actually do resonate and right before the movie, there's a little bullshit clip that should be helpful, but it's really just going along with protocol.

First off, it says phones are to be turned off or put in silent mode, second off, crying babies must be taking to the lobby, and third off, unnecesary noises should be kept to a minimum. So i find myself asking one simple question when I'm halfway through the movie, why do I have to put up with an orally fixated gremlin that can't seem to stop playing with his water bottle, chewing it and making just an unnecessary amount of racket. Why do the parents sit idly by, while people like me, who may or may not be about to snap, sit at mere feet from their child, fantasizing of all the ways I could offer some good old catholic discipline since the very nature of respecting others has definitely not sunk into this little shit. I pay cold hard cash to go to the movies and yet, I have no rights to donkey kick the kid so the rest of the theater can enjoy the movie.

And what is this shit about brining eight year olds into R movies. I know the economy is fucked, but again, since I'm paying cold hard cash for this "experience", why the fuck don't you go out of your way to let everyone enjoy.

But know, the little fucker keeps chewing the bottle, even after I shushed him, even after I stood up and squeezed my bottle next to his pretty little head and even after I looked him in the eye and courteously asked him to please stop the bottle munching. Alas, my efforts were for not, and this little fucker is going to grow up to run daddy's business to the ground. I know this is a pecadillo, but even the smallest of sin can lead to irreversible assholeness, so please, next time you insist on taking and annoying child into a movie, know that if they don't behave, one day thirty year old nobody, with an average job is going to snap and become a headline...

I know it makes me unpopular with my 12 and 13 year old, but there is no way in hell they are seeing an R movie with my knowledge, let alone brought into the theater by me. (I've even said "no" to a couple of PG-13 flicks that don't sound appropriate.)

Disciplining kids is not pleasant, but the alternative is worse: Parents want to be a "friend" to their kids, so they let them do whatever the hell they want, and they don't want to sacrifice their own fun, so they screw everyone else in the process. I blame the baby boomers, personally.